time excluded
everything else.

Melicent had shunned Gregoire since the shooting. She had avoided
speaking with him--even looking at him. During the turmoil which
closely followed upon the tragic event, this change in the girl had
escaped his notice. On the next day he suspected it only. But the
third day brought him the terrible conviction. He did not know that
she was making preparations to leave for St. Louis, and quite
accidentally overheard Hosmer giving an order to one of the unemployed
mill hands to call for her baggage on the following morning before
train time.

As much as he had expected her departure, and looked painfully forward
to it, this certainty--that she was leaving on the morrow and without
a word to him--bewildered him. He abandoned at once the work that was
occupying him.

"I didn' know Miss Melicent was goin' away to-morrow," he said in a
strange pleading voice to Hosmer.

"Why, yes," Hosmer answered, "I thought you knew. She's been talking
about it for a couple of days."

"No, I didn' know nothin' 'tall 'bout it," he said, turning away and
reaching for his hat, but with such nerveless hand that he almost
dropped it before placing it on his head.

"If you're going to the house," Hosmer called after him, "tell
Melicent that Woodson won't go for her trunks before morning. She
thought she'd need to have them ready to-night."

"Yes, if I go to the house. I don' know if I'm goin' to the house or
not," he replied, walking listlessly away.

Hosmer looked after the young man, and thought of him for a moment: of
his soft voice and gentle manner--perplexed that he should be the same
who had expressed in confidence the single regret that he had not been
able to kill Jocint more than once.

Gregoire went directly to the house, and approached that end of the
veranda on which Melicent's room opened. A trunk had already been
packed and fastened and stood outside, just beneath the low-silled
window that was open. Within the room, and also beneath the window,
was another trunk, before which Melicent kneeled, filling it more or
less systematically from an abundance of woman's toggery that lay in a
cumbrous heap on the floor beside her. Gregoire stopped at the window
to tell her, with a sad attempt at indifference:

"Yo' brotha says don't hurry packin'; Woodson ain't goin' to come fur
your trunks tell mornin'."

"All right, thank you," glancing towards him for an instant carelessly
and going on with